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arts entertainmentPerforming Arts

Tenor Simon O'Neill charms the crowd at recital, but the art-song singing — well ...

The recital, presented by the Dallas Opera, explored songs and operatic excerpts by Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner and Richard Strauss.

The 19th century saw a great flourishing of art songs, some strung together in cycles, by major composers. Sadly, chances to hear this repertory are rare: It calls for relatively intimate performance spaces, and singers and pianists sensitive to subtle expressive nuances.

A small Dallas series called Voces Intimae has been presenting area singers in art-song recitals, but they've lacked ideal venues and the financial resources to promote their offerings. Thanks to the Dallas Opera, we now can count on an annual vocal recital by a major operatic singer in the Robert E. and Jean Ann Titus Art Song Recital Series.

On Sunday afternoon, Simon O'Neill, a New Zealand tenor best known as a Wagnerian, performed with pianist Terence Dennis at Moody Performance Hall. It was a thoughtfully assembled all-German program, ranging from the early 19th century to the early 20th.

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Along with individual songs by Schumann and Strauss, there were two song cycles: Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved) and Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder. There were also four operatic excerpts: "Gott! Welch dunkel hier," from Beethoven's Lenore, the original version of what was subsequently revised as Fidelio; "Winterstüme," from Wagner's Die Walküre; "Brünnhilde! Heilige Braut" from Götterdämmerung; and "Falke, du wiedergefundener" from Strauss' strange Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow).

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O'Neill, who sang the part of Siegmund in last May's Dallas Symphony concert performance of Die Walküre, put the selections in context with friendly, helpful introductions. His New Zealand accent added to the charm.

Opera singers often enjoy the chance to perform art songs, and some do it splendidly. But voices accustomed to singing over full orchestras in 3,000-seat houses don't always scale down volume -- and expressive nuance -- to a venue like the 450-seat Moody.

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O'Neill did a pretty good job of reducing his heroic voice to the space and music at hand. Still, he was best at the operatic selections, where he was freer to dramatize on a larger scale.

The songs too often wanted a tenderness that rarely materialized. He could sing relatively softly here and there, but I heard little magic, vulnerability or hushed amazement at love and nature. There was too often a keen edge to his otherwise handsome tenor, notably on "ee" sounds ("ie" in German) and related vowels. Some top notes, in both full voice and falsetto, sounded less than comfortable.

Consonants consistently came at the expense of legato lines. The music proceeded word-by-word, even syllable-by-syllable, more than by poetic phrase. Such issues aren't so crucial when singing over a Wagnerian or Straussian orchestra in a 3,000-seat house, but they were here.

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Bravo, though, to pianist Dennis, who brought all the expressive magic -- the nudging or hesitation of a phrase, the shifts and subtleties of dynamic and tone -- too often missing from the singing.

Maybe the Dallas Opera should consider more of a specialist art-song singer, rather than an opera singer, for a future recital.

Formerly classical music critic of The Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell continues to cover the beat as a freelance writer. Classical music coverage at The News is supported in part by a grant from the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. The News makes all editorial decisions.